From: Guy Steele (Guy.Steele@Sun.COM)
Date: Wed Dec 14 2005 - 10:32:30 CST
On Dec 13, 2005, at 5:39 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>
> Care must betaken also when list items are themselves complex, such
> as when they are also lists possibily using another type of
> relationship ("and" instead of "or"). The common assumption (in
> European languagesand in most programming languages) that the and-
> relation has a greater priority than the or-relation may be opposed
> to the common meaning used in other languages. The way we can
> translate these lists may be even more difficult when the operator
> is implied in long lists (the repetition of the operator may be
> needed instead of just using the usual comma separation that
> normally abbreviates such lists), and when at least one of the item
> is translatable only with bulleted lists.
Some illustrative examples:
For a good omelet I need eggs, ham or bacon, and onions.
I serve it with rolls and butter, toast and marmalade, and bagels,
cream cheese, and lox.
[Clearer: I serve it with rolls and butter; toast and marmalade; and
bagels, cream cheese, and lox. With neither semicolons nor the
American-style comma before "and", it is nearly impossible to grasp:
I serve it with rolls and butter, toast and marmalade and bagels,
cream cheese and lox.]
My mom serves it with fish and chips and either peanut butter and
jelly, bacon, lettuce, and tomato, or olives and cream cheese.
[Clearer: My mom serves it with fish and chips, and either peanut
butter and jelly; bacon, lettuce, and tomato; or olives and cream
cheese. Note that in this example some of the commas bind tighter
than the semicolons but the first comma binds looser.]
For a good sandwich I need peanut butter and jelly or turkey and mayo
and wheat bread.
[Only semantic analysis can disambiguate that one! Clearer: For a
good sandwich I need peanut butter and jelly or turkey and mayo, and
wheat bread.]
For a great sandwich I need peanut butter and jelly or marshmallow
Fluff.
[Unclear whether peanut butter comes with that Fluff. Clearer: For a
great sandwich I need peanut butter and either jelly or marshmallow
Fluff. Or: For a great sandwich I need peanut butter, and jelly or
marshmallow Fluff. Or: For a great sandwich I need peanut butter and
jelly, or marshmallow Fluff.]
I'll guess that other languages have other punctuation conventions
for such nested situations.
--Guy Steele
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